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Music

Adele Makes a Good Time Out of Misery in Second Dallas Performance

Adele, the Chicago Cubs, and at least one mother in Dallas had a very powerful night.
By Jesus Jimenez |
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Gripping a folding knife in my right pocket, I carefully measured my steps walking up to a guy in a dark parking lot in front of the Sheraton Hotel downtown. (We’ll call him Mark.)

“Are you Mark?” I asked, pretending to be confident but really nervous about the Craigslist exchange about to go down.

“Yeah,” he said, walking under the street light to reveal his face.

I loosened the grip on the knife. Mark and I were meeting up so I could buy his tickets to the second of Adele’s sold-out back-to-back performances at the American Airlines Center.

I Venmo-ed him, he gave me the tickets and we parted away. Adele tickets? Check. Next I called my mom to tell her she needed to cancel whatever plans she had for Wednesday night because I was surprising her with tickets to see Adele for her birthday.


After my mom paid $60 for a T-shirt that said “Hello” on the front, we made our way up the escalators to our seats. The first thing that stood out to me was the age of the crowd. I’m not the biggest Adele fan—my mom is—but I was expecting a much younger audience. The average concertgoer age seemed to be about 45 years old, but the demographics varied from girls as young as four to a balding guy in his 70s, all present to see the 28-year old from Tottenham, England.

Unlike many performers who are fashionably late to their shows, Adele took the stage promptly at about 8:15 p.m. Adele opened with “Hello,” the lead single of her latest album 25, wearing a sequined ball gown—her only outfit of the evening—for the hundredth of the 107 shows on this tour.

After a few songs, Adele warned her fans. “Are you ready for a good time?” she asked the audience. “Well, I have some bad news for you because this show is absolute misery. This show is about 17 songs about me and my ex-boyfriend.”

I wasn’t expecting much from the show. I was here for my mom. My plan was to enjoy some music while my buddy Chris texted me a play-by-play of Game 7 of the World Series. (Thank you, Chris. You were clutch).

But despite Adele’s playful warning, she put on an incredible performance. I only know the Adele singles I hear on the radio, but even for the songs I wasn’t familiar with, taking in the power and range of her voice was astounding. Her voice radiated to the nosebleeds of the AAC, enough to drown out the middle-aged women attempted to croon the way only Adele can croon. That voice paired with the superb visuals for an outstanding evening.

Adele also talks, a lot. She warned fans that she does it because she still gets nervous, but one would also assume that she does it to rest her voice in between so many difficult notes. When she spoke, it was usually to give the audience more context and background to her songs, mainly about the heartbreak of her last relationship.

Photo by Jesus Jimenez.
Photo by Jesus Jimenez.

She also took the time to engage with her fans. Toward the beginning of the show, she brought up two girls—a pair of girls, aged 5 and 8, with their mother—onto the stage because Adele says she likes to meet people. The sisters cried in Adele’s presence, which made Adele cry, too. In between several songs, Adele walked around the stage to ask fans where they were from. (“Abileer? Is it Abileer or Abilene?”) She asked if they were here for any special occasion and serenaded a fan by singing “Happy Birthday” for her (and my mom). She asked how many boyfriends and husbands were dragged to her show.

She also showed off her sense of humor. “You guys have no idea how hard it is to come out here and casually sing ‘Hello’ in front of 18,000 people,” she quipped. “I’m up here, and I just want to s–t myself.”

Adele concluded her set on the B-stage in the middle of the floor with the hit “Set Fire to the Rain.” As she performed, water fell around the perimeter of the stage like rain, and she slowly descended below the stage for the grand finale. After a lengthy ovation, Adele reappeared on the main stage for an encore of the fan favorites “When We Were Young” and “Rolling in the Deep.”

As Adele descended under the stage for the last time and confetti fell from the heights of the AAC, my mother sat in her seat in awe of the performance she had just seen. Me? Well, I was impressed too, but also eager to get to a TV to watch the rest of Game 7. Thankfully we sped home in time for the bottom of the ninth to watch the Chicago Cubs win the team’s first World Series title in 108 years. The night was a win for Adele, a win for my mom, and a win for Chicago. But when will the Rangers get their win?

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